


Serpent's Kiss: Book 1 (Subtitle in Progress)

by RheaDiVittoria



Series: Serpent's Kiss [1]
Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton, Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fae & Fairies, Foster Care, M/M, Shapeshifting, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-01-26 12:30:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12557420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RheaDiVittoria/pseuds/RheaDiVittoria
Summary: Dropped off at the doorstep of an orphanage only to be landed in the local foster system, Adair has never belonged anywhere. Even when his final foster family takes him in, the moment he so much as feels like he has found somewhere to grow his roots, he discovers exactly why he was left where he was from birth. The Prince of the Unseelie, he continues to run away from his legacy birthright even upon realizing what fate the Fae have been forced to endure, himself hiding behind the new legacy he has been granted by his girlfriend and foster sister, Lea. But when she disappears, he has to choose to keep running and search for her to regain the future they could have together or face what is destined to be his future as it has been destined against him.





	1. Family Number... I Lost Count.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adair meets his next foster family of too many to count even he's lost track by this point: The Warner's.

Of all the things he hated the most about being in any system, particularly this one: it was the waiting around. Even if, thankfully, he had not had to do very much of it. No, just every now and then when he was being transferred from one family to another after any amount of time spent with them for whatever reason given. A yawn escaped him and he rolled his eyes at these thoughts, ignored the look from the woman at the desk at the social worker’s as they passed over her.

He could imagine what she was thinking of him. Though he didn’t really care because, well, this time, like a majority of the other times, with only a couple exceptions here and there being because of him, he had not been the cause of reason for this transfer. And even if it was, he didn’t know the woman to care about what she thought about him.

That aside, even if he had known her, his reason for being here this time… well, this time, he could say it hadn’t been because of him that he was here, in this boring, bare-bones room of an office that seemed to be the norm for most social workers. It had just so happened that a friend of a friend in the family he’d been living with the past couple years had moved in, and now they’d needed to give somebody back since they couldn’t afford any number of kids past four. So, he’d been the one.

Taking up two of the seats in the waiting room, he stretched out over them so that his head was hanging awkwardly off to the side of one seat, his legs on the other of the two, with one bent at the knee. It wasn’t too much longer in this position, when the same woman who’d been watching him from the desk came over to him and looked down at him. He looked back up at her, turning the volume down on his scratched up Discman to hear her.

“Are you really that bored?”

Adair grinned and nodded his head slightly at her. “Yeap.”

“There’s nothing you brought with you that you could entertain yourself with? Besides, well, that?” She eyed the Discman in his hand.

He snorted and had to keep himself from rolling his eyes. “Yes and no.”

Desk Woman raised a brow at him, idly smoothing out her pencil-skirt as she waited for him to explain himself.

“Yes, I do. But, no, I’m not in the mood for it right now.” He explained to her, purposefully keeping things vague. He had a sketch pad he liked to draw in every now and then, mostly of particular memories and events of some kind of meaning to him. Most of the time, though, he had to be in a particular mood for them, or they just didn’t come out as he liked them to.

Desk Woman shook her head at him and shrugged as she turned around and went back to work at her desk, muttering something along the way about “Kids these days.” As she did, he cast a glance at everything he’d brought with him, a backpack and a duffel bag, before shrugging and holding the screen of the Discman up over his head so he could see the contents on the screen and what was playing, turning the volume back on as he did so.

Or, rather, he’d been about to, when Desk Woman returned.

It took him a moment for him to act as if he’d only just then noticed her, instead of having to keep himself from flipping over the two chairs he was lazing on. She’d been here just a second ago.

Holding in a sigh, he finally acknowledged her and turned the volume back down for her. “Yes?”

Blinking at the word, she held up a handful of kids’ coloring books and a packet of crayons before going back to her desk in a quick run, heels clacking along the floor. He blinked back at her odd reappearance and disappearance before giving the coloring books and crayons a funny look. 

He was 17, not 7…. and he almost wanted to tell Desk Woman that, all the while looking at the books on the table a couple of feet away from him.

As he did, the only pair of doors to the room opened and a man and a young girl who looked about his age walked through to the desk at the opposing side facing the double doors.

Adair sat up then, smoothing his ‘artfully’ tattered blue jeans (he’d admit, they were an old pair that had gotten the tatters over time, but he’d improvised with those tatters so now they didn’t look nearly so old and worn) and shirt that had gotten slightly wrinkled from lounging as he had over the two seats he’d stretched out over, running a hand through his angle-cut blond bangs; a seemingly pointless gesture as they only ever fell back into his eyes every time he did that.

Desk Woman looked up from whatever she’d been looking at on the computer on her desk, blinked at the man, then flicked her eyes at the girl before returning them to him.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m here to pick someone up. Adair… Ereegal?” He stretched out the middle of the last name.

Having turned off his Discman this time to listen to the conversation, Adair corrected the man.

“Errigal, but you got Adair right,” he said with a grin in the direction of the man and the girl, eyes falling on the girl just long enough for her to shift her eyes to the man and then look back at him with a small smile.

The man chuckled and shook his head. “Sorry. I’m Caleb, this is Lea,” He said as he turned to gather the small stack of papers waiting for him on the desk and started leafing through and signing them as Desk Woman pointed out to him where on the pages he was to sign for Adair.

While Caleb signed for him, Adair went back to move the two seats he’d been sitting on back into place and picked up both his bags, heading out of the room as if he couldn’t wait another minute in it with Lea following behind him.

“She really gave you the coloring books.” She’d noted, a hint of amusement in her tone that told him she was trying not to laugh. Adair rose a brow as his response to the observation as he leaned against the car, watching her move to sit on its hood, both of them having tried the doors of the car only to find them locked.

“They never treated you like you were younger than you really were while you waited with them?”

Lea shook her head as her answer to the question, lip curling up slightly, folding her arms lightly over herself as she scooted further onto the hood to lounge. “How bored were you waiting for us?”

Here he climbed up on the car to lay on the roof in the same position he’d been in the waiting room, head facing closest to Lea so he could look upside down to her. “Is this bored enough for the books?”

Lea snorted and slapped his arm lightly. “Yeah, I’d give you the coloring books too if I’d seen you like that. I saw you getting up when we came in.”

Adair pouted playfully at her as he rolled off the hood just in time as Caleb came out and unlocked the doors.


	2. Welcome to the Warner's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adair settles in for first night with Caleb and Lea.

Climbing out when they got to the Warner’s, Adair pulled his bags out from between the seats with him, taking in the two-story family home with whitewashed siding and bay windows and front and back porch and two decks on the second story. It was no fancier than any other average suburban home. At least in so far as the outside showed.

“Lea, why don’t you show Adair around?” Caleb asked as he walked in after Adair with Lea, heading into the kitchen without waiting for an answer while Lea walked up a flight of stairs just off of the living room, Adair following behind, up the stairs and into a room that sat on the left side at the end of the long, narrow hallway. 

There was a queen-sized bed with dark blue patterned bed sheets tucked into one corner next to one window with an end table next to it on the other side. On one side of the room was a mahogany desk with a matching mahogany chair while opposite the desk on the same side as the bed was a mahogany dresser.

Kicking off his shoes to lay next to his bags, he flopped onto the bed, looking at Lea as she slid herself down against the nearest wall, both legs against her chest as she looked back at him. 

“How did you get a name like Adair?” 

Adair looked down at her. “I don’t know.” He laughed. 

Lea frowned, chewing on her lip in confusion. “You don’t even know where you got your name? How long have you been doing this foster thing?” 

He shrugged. “Since I was a baby?” He said it as question in reply to her own, but really he didn’t know exactly how long he’d been doing ‘this foster thing’ as she’d called it. Even his earliest house memories had involved moving. 

“Was it always you?” 

“Not always. Sometimes it was them, but sometimes it’s also been me.” He smiled innocently at her after he said that, and she laughed. 

“Do I have to keep an eye on you?” She asked him with a teasing tone to her voice and he continued to smile innocently at her, stretching out on the bed before tilting his head to her. 

“Would you like to?” 

Lea giggled and put a hand to her face, turning her head away from him. “Are you always such a tease?” 

“Always. What about you?” 

“Am I always such a tease?” 

“That and how long have you been doing this foster thing?” 

“I can be and... I’ve only done the foster thing once.” She lowered her head to her chest where her knees still bunched up against her, eyes flitting up to his almost sheepishly. Adair laughed and her head perked up to him, as if not expecting the laugh. 

“Once and you act like you should be doing it more. Should I be keeping an eye on you?” It was his turn to lower his head and lock his brown eyes down to hers, a smirk crawling up over his lips until she jutted out a knee and kicked one of his.

“Ow! What was that for?” He rubbed his knee where she’d kicked him. 

“Oh my God, you are such a baby. I didn’t even kick you that hard.” She laughed at him, long waves of brown hair falling over her face as she stretched out to hide her face from him. “That was for being a tease, you tease.” 

A cough came from the entrance and they looked up to see Caleb standing there balancing a box of pizza on one arm as he leaned against the door frame. Staring at them with a strange expression on his face of both parental concern but also amusement. It was obvious he was trying not to encourage more of this but that it was obvious to him was still amusing regardless.“Do I need to keep an eye on you both?” He asked them with a teasing tone; although something in the midst of the teasing told them he wasn’t completely joking, but the amusement pulling at the corners of his lips was telling them this was something he was having a hard time being completely serious about. 

“Dad, Adair’s a tease.” Lea said as she wiped her eyes, trying to recover herself. 

“As long as he doesn’t grow up to be the father of your baby, he can be all the tease he wants,” he said with a laugh as Adair exchanged surprised glances with Lea before returning their eyes to Caleb, who stepped in and put the pizza on the floor in front of them before rising to his feet and taking some steps back. 

“I’ll say this about you two so far. You guys are maybe the most amusing I’ve had in a while,” Adair said as he grabbed a slice of pepperoni from the box after Lea opened it and took a slice herself. 

“Dad, you eating with us?” 

“I’ve got some things to work on, but maybe tomorrow night.” Caleb said as he walked out of the bedroom, stopping to turn and look at Adair and Lea before leaving. 

“What’s Caleb do for work?” He asked through a mouthful of pizza that earned him a disgusted glare from Lea. He swallowed and smiled innocently at her while she shook her head at him. 

“Radio DJ,” she replied. 

Adair nodded as he swallowed another bite. “Is it just you two?” 

“Just us. I was living with my mom before him, but after she died they put me in. I didn’t have any other relatives in the area. I had other relatives around the states, but... I didn’t want to get involved.” 

Adair stared at her curiously, pausing mid-chew. She shook her head lightly. “It was that kind of stuff where the less you knew, the less trouble you got in.” 

He shrugged. “So you put yourself in after your mom died rather than move around more and deal with that stuff...” He bobbed his head in a slight nod. “It’s better than what I have,” he said with an apologetic smile, grabbing another slice. 

“What about you? Have you just been moving around here?” 

Adair nodded, swallowing a bite. “Thankfully. Moving’s annoying when it’s somebody else doing the moving for you. At least I’ll be turning 18 soon. Finally I’ll be done with them.” 

Lea squeaked. “When do you turn 18?” 

“October 18. When’s your birthday?” 

“July 30.” 

Leaning back as she pushed the pizza aside, Lea let out a loud burp. “Excuse m-” when she was interrupted by a louder burp from Adair. “Mine wasn’t a call for a burping contest.” 

“I still win,” Adair said with a grin. 

“I can see how you were a hard time,” Lea said as she picked up the box from the floor, eyes sparkling with mirth as they flitted down to him. 

“I’ll show you a hard time.” 

“You are such a flirt!" 

“And? 

“I wonder if it means anything to you that I’m your foster sister.” 

“It does.” 

“What’s it mean to you that I’m your foster sister now?” 

“That technically we’re not biologically related so it’s not like I’m flirting with someone I really shouldn’t be,” he said as he rose slowly to his feet, covering the couple of feet from him to her and looking down at her, a few inches taller enough so that she had to look up to him. 

“You always have a back-up plan, don’t you?” She asked him in a teasing lilt as she tried visibly not to touch him with how close he was, one arm outstretched to balance the box on one hand while the other one was twitching subtly by her side with trying not to reach out and touch him. “I... think I hear Dad calling,” she said after a moment where he looked down at her with a look on his face that answered her last question in mild amusement that instantly turned into some confusion as she turned and left with the pizza. Adair blinked and stepped back to let her pass by him, shrugging. 

“Girls.” He started wondering about her. One minute she was flirting back with him and another minute after she was telling him she was hearing voices. Adair had been listening for Caleb in case he walked in to check on either of them, and he knew he hadn’t heard him calling. There was a knock on the door and Adair looked up. Speak of the Devil. 

“Everything okay with you two? I meant what I said about the father of her baby, but I never saw anything wrong with flirting. You’ll find I’m pretty easy most of the time with most things, but Lea was acting weird downstairs.” He sat as he took the chair at the desk and slid it forward to sit on it backwards, leaning forward with his arms hanging down the back. 

“All we did was flirt, she just took one of my flirts the wrong way.” 

“You flirt a lot don’t you? Did any of them make you move to the next place?” 

“I do, and, yeah, a couple times when the girls were uptight and took what I said the wrong way like maybe how Lea did. I just get that way when I like a girl.” He tilted his head and gave Caleb his best innocent look. As he’d hoped, Caleb laughed. 

“She was right about you being a tease.” 

“She was?” 

“I don’t have to worry about you two... doing...?” He trailed off, but Adair knew what he had been trying to ask. 

“No, no. I’m a tease and a flirt, but I don’t plan on being the father of a kid anytime soon. I don’t want kids. You guys are good.” He honestly meant what he’d said about kids. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them, but he just couldn’t see himself having any with anyone. 

Caleb stared. 

“Let me guess, you don’t believe me.”

He laughed. “No, I can tell you meant that, surprisingly. I guess I just didn’t expect that kind of an answer from anyone your age.” 

Adair shrugged. 

“I guess I’ll tell Lea your flirts are just flirts.” 

Adair blinked and looked up at him. “I didn’t do anything else, right? Just said something she took the wrong way?” 

Caleb chuckled, “You’re staying, if that’s what you meant. I like you.” 

“Did you just say you liked a guy who just moved in with us?” 

Caleb and Adair turned their eyes to the doorway, where Lea was standing with her arms crossed loosely over her chest and a look of amusement on her face. 

“How long were you standing there?” Caleb asked her, exchanging a glance with Adair. 

“Long enough,” she said with a grin, eyes on Adair as Caleb gave her a level stare much like the one he’d given Adair earlier when Adair had told him how he was just a big flirt. Adair looked back at her with an amused curl to his lips, flopping back on his bed in a suggestive pose and a teasing grin as Caleb stared at Lea for a moment. 

She’d changed from her previous outfit of jeans and a dark grey, mid-riff spaghetti-strap tank-top into a pair of hot pink short shorts that just reached her thighs and a black sleeveless shirt. 

“You changed for bed already?” Caleb finally asked her, ignoring the pose that Adair had suggestively laid out on the bed in for Lea, although the amusement in his voice said that he hadn’t completely missed it. 

“Yeah. Were we going out? I can just change back.” 

Adair picked his head up with his arm propping it on the bed while still in the suggestive pose, winking at Lea when she looked from Caleb to him. Lea put a hand to her mouth, turning her head as she held back a laugh, only partially successful. 

“Depends. Adair, you wanna go out anywhere?” 

Adair shrugged and looked between Caleb and Lea. “Didn’t plan on that.” 

“Yes or no would work fine too.” 

“That was also a no.” He grinned at Caleb. 

“Or we could stay in and do something. It’s still early.” 

“We can do that. See how long Adair can behave around us alone before we go with him in public,” Lea said as she stuck her tongue out at him. 

Adair laughed. “I can behave.” He whined.

“Caleb, tell her you’ve seen me behave.” 

“I’ve seen him behave,” Caleb said with a chuckle. 

“Fiiine, take his side because he’s a _man_ ,” she said with a joking whine of her own as she puffed out her chest and angled an arm into a muscled fist at them. 

A moment of silence fell as she did this, and the two men exchanged a confused look between each other, causing Lea to lower her arm and unpuff herself, staring between the two when they burst out laughing at her. “Oh, you.” Caleb said as he rose from the chair he’d been sitting in across the room from Adair. “I’ll go get the board games ready?” 

Adair and Lea nodded and Caleb pushed the chair back into the desk, walking out after Lea stepped aside for him, at which he grabbed her arm where the muscle she’d made before had been. “Hey,” she said, taking her arm out from his light grasp. Caleb grinned back at Adair and left, heading downstairs. 

“Did you really not want to go out? Or did you say that so you could see me in this longer?” Lea asked him after Caleb had left them, continuing to lean against the bedroom wall for the moment.

Adair looked at her in the same position as before when Caleb had been in the room, tilting his head in an innocent cant to one side. “If I said it was because of both, would you still hit me?” 

“Was it because of both?” 

“Ye- ow!” Lea grinned, stepping back to look down at Adair, who had finally moved out of his position, surprised only by a bit that she had hit him as she’d said she would. 

“Baby,” she said as she watched Adair get up and stretch, shaking her head. He was prolonging the stretch in a teasing show of himself, exposing some of his stomach where the hair of his belly ran under his shirt down into his jeans. She turned and walked out of the room and down the stairs, Adair following behind her.


	3. The Errand and an Unexpected Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> En route to do an errand at the school, Lea bumps into her friends with Adair before she could get a chance to groom him for them. Needless to say, she gets to see some of how bad Adair might have once been with other girls before her. But at least they still get invited to one of the last nights out with the other kids at school before school starts.

It was light out by the time Adair woke up the next morning, dressed in a pair of jeans and black-on-white, thin-striped t-shirt and heading downstairs; the smell of steaming coffee reaching his nose before he entered the kitchen where Lea sat at the island counter with a small pile of mail before her. He eyed the outfit she was wearing with a more than appreciative once-over. This time she was wearing a black-lace top slit at the shoulders and showing just the top of her chest where it began and a pair of blue-black jeans. There was a split second as he came down the stairs and entered the room where she was still reading, before she seemed to sense him enter and hastily shoved the letter back into its envelope. Her eyes flicked up and she smiled, as if he had been here the whole time and there was no strange letter she had only just read to make her face twist into a mix of confusion and disgust as it had. 

“Morning, sleepyhead.” 

“Sleepyhead? It’s 8 o’ clock.” 

“I wake up at 5 with Dad.” She said as she walked by him and bopped him on the nose with one of her letters, which she put down as she dug through the cabinet above the sink for a coffee mug, holding one up at Adair. “You drink coffee?” 

He nodded and she poured him a cup, taking hers from the counter and doing the same. 

“Black?” 

“There’s another way to drink coffee?” 

“You’re fitting in already,” she said with a laugh as she took a sip from her own mug; sliding his over the counter to his side. "Okay, so, Dad gave me the papers this morning. I just need to bring them in for him. You ready?” 

“Sure.” They finished their coffee and Lea washed and dried the cups before stepping out, their only pause when Lea went up to her room with the letter, returning downstairs to Adair without it, the papers in her hand now instead. He frowned in thought, wondering what had been in that particular letter that had brought on that strange expression on Lea’s face before shrugging it off like nothing. It had nothing to do with him. He at least figured that much about the letter from how she almost seemingly instantly switched herself back to normal once she saw him. 

They walked out of the house. Lea locked the behind them before they started walking. 

“How long have you been homeschooled?” 

“Since I’ve been in foster. Not even really sure why, they probably thought I’d be... ‘traumatized’ by moving so soon after mom died or something.” She laughed. “It couldn’t have been that hard for you, though, right? Since you don’t sound like you were ever homeschooled.” 

Adair shook his head. “It wasn’t, but I made everyone wish they’d had me homeschooled instead, still am,” he said with a slight waggle of his eyebrows at her. 

“Was it all because of the girls?” She asked in a mock singsong voice. 

“Awe, come on, you make it sound like all I’m good at is flirting.” 

“You probably are!” 

“Wait until you see me when school starts. You’ll be eating those words.” 

“Sure, and if I win?” 

“Then I’ll reconsider and admit I’m a flirt who’s good at nothing but flirting.” 

“Where’s the fun in that?” 

“What?” 

“Then you’ll just say it so I’ll back off. I know how you guys are.” She bumped his side into him, walking along as they did. He bumped back into her. 

“Please. You like that I’m flirting wi-” 

“Hey, Lea, who’s this?” 

Lea and Adair looked in front of them, where two girls were heading their way, smiles on their faces and looks on their eyes that all but said they were looking at Adair. 

“Uhm...” Lea mumbled, shifting her eyes between the girls, now playing with the snakeskin bag slung across her shoulders as if were the most interesting thing in the world. She blushed and Adair grinned, almost as if somehow winning something. 

“Oh, is he your boyfriend?” The two girls looked at each other and laughed. 

Lea’s eyes widened, eyes flitting between the girls and Adair before looking at the one of the two with red hair down to her waist pulled back into a braid. “No. Madi. Madi, Ty, this is Adair. He’s my foster brother I told you about.” She nodded at both girls as she said their names, Madi being the girl with the red hair and Ty being the one with the hazel hair and sharper features where Madi’s were a little more on the softer side. 

“So... definitely not your boyfriend?” Madi asked, a deviant smirk on her lips as she looked between them, folding her arms across herself as Lea began to blush. 

“Ty, has anybody told you that you ask too many questions?” Lea asked with a look that said this probably wasn’t the first time this had ever been asked.

“Hm... probably.” 

“Instigator.”

“So, Lea’s already told you about me?” Adair asked the girls, brushing a hand across his face as strands of hair once again fell into his eyes. His over-the-side mohawk was getting long again, and he made a mental note to himself to cut it once he got back home. Like that ever happened. 

“Kinda. She didn’t tell us you would be this hot though.” Madi grinned at Adair, stepping forward while Adair stayed where he was, but the look he gave her as he openly eyed her was enough to know he was catching onto her already. 

“Really? Think you can pass that along to her? She doesn’t seem to know what she’s missing out on.”

He passed a glance to Lea as he met Madi’s eyes with a flirtatious half-smile. 

“Well, if she’s not getting any of you, maybe I can make her see what she’s missing.” 

“Ahem.” Lea coughed.

Adair jerked his head to the side where Lea stood next to him, a confused look on her face of disbelief and something else. He smiled sheepishly and took a step back but not before giving Madi one more look over as she also stepped back and looked at Ty who was looking at Adair with a look similar to Lea’s, eyes flicking to Lea, then back at Adair, before going between the both of them.

“Anyway, if you two are done melting over each other,’ and here Lea gave Adair and Madi an equal look of disdain, “I have some papers I need to get somewhere.” 

“Prude.” 

Lea’s eyebrows shot up and she stared open-mouthed at Madi. 

“What? I’ve never seen you flirt.” 

Adair stared at Lea. 

“You. Not flirting? That’s happened?” 

Lea slapped him on the arm with the papers she held rolled up in her hand. 

“Just because you charm everyone does not mean you can get past me.” 

“Oh, my, _God_. You are flirting! With _him_.” 

Adair blinked and looked to Madi at her outburst. “I flirt with everybody.” He smiled at her and she glowered, eyes now looking anywhere but at him. 

“Okay. _Anyway_. We really need to go.” Lea wrapped a hand around Adair’s arm and started to pull at him, dragging him away from the girls and further along their route to the school. 

“Hey, Lea!” 

“What, now, Madi?” Lea stopped pulling Adair and turned to look back at the girls. 

“Are you still coming tonight? To the café?” 

“We’ll see.” 

“You should! Oh, and bring Adair.”

Lea glared at Madi. 

“Not for me! Come on. Do it?” Madi whined at Lea. 

“Fine, we’ll both come. But we’re not doing it for you.” 

Madi giggled and turned back around with Ty, Lea and Adair doing the same but in the opposite direction. 

“I should have warned you about her. She’s like a female you.” 

“Here we go again with the flirt and the flirting.” 

“It’s true! Ask one of the guys tonight at the café about Madi. They’ll all tell you she’s tried to get into all of them at some time.” 

Adair laughed. “Takes a flirt to know a flirt, Lea. I’m pretty sure I can keep my pants on around her.”


	4. You Owe Me a Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On one of the few remaining weeks of summer left just before the start of school, Adair and Lea go to a hangout night at The Cafe with some of the other local kids from school. Granted, the moment Adair tries to prove a point and branch out from Lea, things just reel him right back to her. Literally.

It was already late enough by the time they both made it to the café, having decided to walk rather than let Caleb give them both a ride there. It was if they both knew he would have told Adair the whole time to tone it down on the flirting. He had a point, but, he wasn't half as bad as Caleb made him sound to be. Lea was the one he should have been lecturing, however, having dressed herself in a low-riding black-lace halter with the rest of the skin only just barely being covered by the half-leather jacket she wore over it. Adair just reminded himself it could have been a lot worse... that she could have been wearing a mini-skirt instead of the torn jeans she decided to wear with the outfit. 

"I know what you're doing," he said as they neared the place and they slowed down, deciding in an unspoken agreement to enter on their own instead of together so they didn't look like that kind of a pair.  
  
"Oh, and what am I doing?" She tossed her hair over one shoulder with a toss of her head, the smirk in her tone and on her face saying she knew exactly what she meant and that he had picked up on it had only been a part of her plan the whole time. 

He snorted, opening the door and sinking back into the shadow of the cafe front, waiting a minute before following in after her. "I'll go play with the boys." There was a high-pitched sound and they both jumped, Adair slowly sidling away from Lea with a slow smirk on his lips as he did. "Have fun with that one." They parted, Lea moving towards a group of girls near the tables and Adair- 

"Think fast!" Someone yelled as he walked up the stairs to the lounge part of the rather retro-styled place, making him duck just as he caught a pool stick in his hands, using it for balance before he fell back down the stairs. 

"Finally, someone new. This one keeps asking me for a do-over and I can't keep losing my cash on those brains." The one on the right jabbed the one on the left with the butt end of his stick. 

"That asshole farting out of his mouth over there is Steve, and I'm-" 

"A sore loser." Steve dodged the smoldering glare as he peeked over the balustrade to where Lea was with Madi and the other girl, turning when he thought he saw them look up at the three. "Oh, crap! He's the new kid." He grinned and shot a look at Sore Loser. "The girlfriend can live without ya for a night, right? Come on. We gotta show you something. You ever been way back in the cemetery?" Somehow he managed to get blocked on both sides by Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum smirking like a pair of Cheshire Cats on crack. Adair merely blinked, paling.  
Girlfriend? His head turned a hair in the direction of the balustrade where Lea and her friends were. Clearly.. one of her friends liked rumors. Not like he was liking where Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum were thinking of taking him, but... he could always leave. He shrugged. "Depends which one ya talking about." 

"One of us already! Hey, what's your name?" Sore Loser took the stick from his hands and propped it back up in the pool set. 

"...Adair." 

"Oh, yeah, he is one of us. Come on. Before the girls start coming for us again." 

"Man, ever wonder why girls always go to the bathroom with each other, like, every 5 minutes?" Sore Loser burped, a clear bottle of some type of alcohol in his hands while Steve sat half-flopped onto Adair who was trying to get him off his lap, but between his eyes spazzing and seeing colors after finishing the last pills of whatever had been in that pill bottle Sore Loser had passed between the three of them, he might as well have been poking at a sack of potatoes. 

It said a lot when one started wondering if maybe a pair of buffoons like Steve and Sore Loser were more attractive as they currently were than before; sober, conscious, and blundering. They reminded Adair of a pair of Mr. Potato Heads run into a bad accident with a nuclear-radioactive power plant explosion with a couple more feet to the height so they were just tall enough including a '70s-styled mullet to the one Adair called Sore Loser because he didn't care to remember a name he knew he would forget the moment he was free of the pair. Fine, so his over-the-side mohawk didn't give him much room to talk, but at least his couldn't be used to mop a floor.

For some reason, his own hair was starting to interest him a lot more now. Nodding off, the motion made his hair bounce up and down, back and forth, in front of his eyes. "Oh, my God, he's part cat, man! Look." Rather, he wasn’t. He was just bored out of his ever-loving mind and regretting every second he had to spend losing braincells with these farts. He was merely entertaining himself until he could get up and walk home, or gain back enough motor skill to properly handle a cell phone again. Vaguely, he had half a thought about Lea, but by the time he grabbed onto it he was already forgetting it. _And this, kids, is why we shouldn't drink or do drugs_. 

The one passing, vivid thought he could hang onto that night had him laughing. He wasn't sure what about it struck him funny. Maybe it was because on some more conscious level he knew what he had been trying to think even as he failed miserably at processing the half-thought. The great thing about this, though, was that he was still playing with his hair, so while a more sane and sobered person than Steve and Sore Loser would have run away in the other direction thinking him a crazy person, they were joining in and laughing along, loud enough that they even scared a raven or two from the dead trees surrounding the clearing they were all but passed out in, the laughter getting louder and louder until it became an almost echo followed by a muffled thump of something hard hitting something soft.

A splash of water on his face woke him up more than the fact the sun was so high up in the sky by the time Lea found him that it must have been at least noon.

The kick in the ribs just ensured the reality he hadn't dreamed everything that happened last night. Yeah, as if between the fact she was still dressed in the same teasing outfit she wore to the cafe, he couldn't possibly have been able to tell he'd passed out drugged and drunk in the cemetery Steve and Sore Loser had managed to lure him into hanging out with them at.

"Wake up dumbass, you sir, are an idiot."

"Hey, not my fault I attract dumbass hyenas," Adair groaned as he rose and shook his now dripping wet hair from his eyes as he rose slowly and steadily to his feet, stumbled out of the cemetery clearing he'd been found in. Lea sighed dramatically as Adair returned her sigh with a pointed glare.

"Almost forgot." He pointed at his hair with that look still fixated on Lea, only the gleam of mischief in his eyes possibly giving anything away that he might or might not be being completely serious. Then again that mischievous gleam in his dark brown eyes was always there, it seemed, so it was still slightly hard to tell. "Never. Mess with. The hair."

Lea snorted derisively. "Yeah, okay Uncle Jesse. Now please tell me you're just still drugged or hungover or whatever those so-called dumbass hyenas did to you. Are you seriously not wondering why it was me who woke up and not a freaked out Caleb?"

Adair blinked as he froze in place and cocked his head to the side, suddenly frowning before just staring at her. 

"Where did you tell him I was all night?"

...She smirked slowly. "Dragged to an impromptu sleepover at Madi's with me." 

"And he fell for that?"

"Oh, yeah, Madi was so excited just telling it he had to believe her."  

Adair facepalmed, grumbling as they finally got home. "Fuck."  

"Oh, you're getting your brains back now?" She grinned, making a stupid kissy face at him as she did.  

"You owe me... big. Time."  

"Oh, no, no, no. I just saved your ass, so you owe both us girls."


	5. Cafeteria Circus and a Deal with the She-Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the last chapter (4), Adair resolves his so-called favor-to-do with Madi while Lea watches the popularity bars rise from the sidelines.

“And that happened on WBTN." Caleb said with a laugh as he shot an awkward look at his co-worker, Kyle, pressing the red button and taking his headphones off before running a hand through his short brown hair. He rubbed at the shadow that was starting to grow on his chin, wondering when that had started to grow. Why had he ever signed up for a morning show? Especially one where the morning segments were full of half-asleep single women crying about some bad relationship asking for advice or other.

"Before you ask, you look like Hell." Kyle quirked a brow, getting up to get himself another cup of coffee from the desk in the corner, Caleb rising and stretching with a yawn before following and doing the same. He was clearly missing a lot of things.

"How's that new kid you got? He any better than the last one? Worse? Actually like him for once? Honestly I'm surprised you haven't broken from any of their crap yet... teenagers."  
  
Caleb shrugged, frowning. He had to bring that one up, hadn't he? Lea hadn't been as excited as she'd been for any one foster kid's existence until Adair, and now she was back to being almost exactly as she had been before her mother, Rivka, had set her house on fire... they still didn't really know what had caused that, but with Caleb having known his sister, evil thing that she was... he wondered if it hadn't been an enemy witch. He just hoped Lea didn't get ideas and try to turn Adair into the weresnake she was... after all, it was hard enough trying to be normal in a normal high school full of normal teenagers she always had to be on the lookout for so she didn't get caught. Adair being turned and her having to teach him anything would eventually be found out somehow.

_Goddamit, Riv, why did you have to go skin that weresnake just so you could be one like the rest of your husband's family to fit in?_ Maybe he didn't get it because he was human and he'd learned to live a normal life while having a family where everyone was a witch but him. Nobody had loved him any less for it, and knowing a family of witches in a world where everything was more than just the globe where a good chunk of humans still thought it was just them always did give him an advan-

"Yoohoo- _Hello_?" Fingers snapped in front of his face and he blinked out of his reverie, head snapping up from where he had started trailing off in his own thoughts. "I guess I have my answer on this kid," said Kyle with a strange look at him as he returned to the desk with his coffee.

Fixing his own coffee, he shook his head out of his haze, hoping to God he didn't get a text from Lea about Adair at any point in the day. He chuffed, making a mental note to talk to the two when everyone got home that night. "All I can say is this. He's something else, alright."

He wondered if Adair had met Madi through Lea yet, as Kyle gave him a quizzical stare, but then he shrugged it off and put the headphones back on, flicking the red button back to On Air as he did so. Madi was as much a flirt as Adair was.

Locker doors slammed and opened and slammed again as the bell shrieked, Adair dumping his books into his locker for lunch when there was a brush of air and a tap on his shoulder, causing him to jump and almost, somehow, whacking his head against the locker door with a grimace to keep from making some pansy ass sound.

"Jesus-!" He growled out low, before rubbing his head and then looking over to see who had just now tried to catch him off guard. It was Madi, or Satan, in a plaid skirt over jeans and flats trying to look all cute and innocent.

"Nope. Try again." She grinned, giggling. God, he wanted to just... but, nah, it wasn't worth detention stuffing her in the locker just for a few moments away from that incessant giggling he'd heard enough of the last few days of summer just before school had started especially. Really, Lea.

"Satan?" He leaned against the locker, smirking when Madi blinked as if in confusion. "Fine. Hi, Madi."

"Awe, you do remember. Satan's a new name though. Actually, I kinda like it." Shit. That was never good.

"Soooooo, Lea told me what she told you after she found you with the Potato Head Twins." She was looking at him as if ready to beg... that was never good. Fuck, where was Lea when you needed her to beat back the devil? Besides, didn't the girls all crowd the same table? Why was Madi here trying to pester something out of him of all people anyway? And, wait, Potato Head Twins? Oh, wait, yeah, right, he had started that name... ah, well, good thing those two were always so high they never knew what they were being called.

"Yeeeeeaaaaaah, she did." He swallowed, not liking where she was going.

"Oh, you know! Good. Then I don't have to ask, do I?"

God, what was with this girl? It was like talking to an Irish Barbie with one too many freckles... he started looking around, before catching Lea talking to two jocks. She was blushing even while obviously trying obviously hard to keep her cool. He frowned, before remembering Caleb ' s warning and shrugging off the concerns.

"And it's masquerade themed, so we might wanna try to at least match a little bit. So, yes? Say yes and you don't have to do anything more for me until the next time you do something stupid and _Lea_ -" she singsonged, immediately catching his attention where she hadn't before- "-won't make us do anything until then."

He smirked, leaning against the locker now. He at least had to pretend he wasn't interested in Lea in the way Madi was seeming to think he was. Yeah, he really had to stop with the flirting there... and Madi was annoying, sure, but at least she was playing back... even despite the interested looks he had seen in class from the other girls he could be, apparently, asking to Homecoming…

" Yeah, sure, why not?" He grinned at her, even wider still when he could tell how thrown off she was by agreeing to it, before something flashed in her green - blue eyes and the confusion was wiped away. Huh. Maybe she was smarter than she seemed.

"Well, gonna go grab lunch. Text me sometime," He said with a wink as he passed by her, not even looking again where he had last seen Lea as he walked in the direction of the cafeteria for food. Take that, Lea. Poor foster boy could catch a date just as well as the best of the normal ones in the elite.

Lea sighed as she gave a wave to the jock who had just asked her to the Homecoming, taking a moment to close her eyes and take in a breath as she did. Why had Caleb let her do this? Between Adair, and Riley, who was nice enough for a Quarterback, but still just as dumb as the rest of the Springfield High Football team put together, well, it was amazing she hadn't shifted in sheer frustration overload. Then she remembered she'd been born with the scaly beast currently writhing anxiously inside her, and it would take less than almost 18 years for it to freak out as if she were an omega and not a, say, beta. Then it wasn't nearly so surprising.

Putting her books in her bag, she nodded when she saw Ty coming down the hallway. "Hey, you." She said, still slightly distracted but not having it in her to bother with anymore bullshit the rest of the day entirely.

"Dude! Madi's being Madi. _Again_." Ty rolled her eyes, playing with her chestnut hair as she always did when she was overthinking. Lea wondered on what that was this time, hazel eyes squinting at her as a brow raised questioningly.

"I can only guess."

"She is telling every girl in the cafe-freaking-teria that she," fingerquotes, "got Adair to take her to Homecoming. The Hell?!"

Lea blinked. Jesus. Were _all_ her friends in a secret Adair Fan Club or something?

Sure, she should be happy for him that Adair looked like he was doing well enough on his own, but, why wouldn't he? He was hot. Nice. And actually smart. Even if he could be a bit too blunt, moreso even than her sometimes. "Okay. What's with the weird dreamy - eyed smile?" She gasped. "Is someone finally actually just leading her on? Cuz that girl can use a drop in that ego."

Lea laughed. "I'll tell you after."

"Awwwee. I won't tell. Promise!"

There really was no winning anything with anyone today, was there? She giggled and leaned in to tell Ty exactly why Adair was being so nice to Madi, about how she found him passed out on the clearing in the local cemetery and texted Madi and used both of them as an excuse to cover up where Adair had really been the night before after leaving the cafe with the since-called Potato Head Twins. Yes, she did realize she could have cashed in her own favor for the same thing Madi just had, but she knew Madi would do exactly as she just had.

" _Oh. My. God_. She's totally using him. Ew. The bitch." Ty shook her head as they walked into the cafeteria, getting their food and heading outside upon seeing Madi doing exactly what Ty had just said she was. "Let's just hope he doesn't do anything more stupid or that poor thing is gonna be getting dragged by the coattails to prom and made Consort to her Queen."

Lea looked up from where they had just sat down, turkey sandwich halfway to her open-mouthed lips. 

"What?" Shit. She'd just slipped, and sooner than Adair had. Who would have thought she'd be the one? She blamed it on the her beast having been acting up lately since Adair had moved in with them, and even she couldn’t explain why because he seemed oblivious to anything strange between them. Maybe she was finally losing it?

"Nothing. I'm just already feeling sorry for the possibility of that happening." She coughed, quickly covering it all up with the lie.

The cafeteria was like any dingy, up-and-coming public high school all the local teenagers went to that tried to make ends meet. Plastic, circular café tables scattered much of the cafeteria where the food stations to one wall weren't. It was easy to see where one was supposed to sit unless they were one of the random loners that formed their own little cliques in the bathrooms if only to get away from the torture that was the pecking order of the tiny little circle of Hell where they were otherwise expected to endure 30 minutes of soul-sucking that made Walmart seem like Heaven.

Rebels and jocks were to the far side, emos in the corner, literally, the corner. Nerds and geeks were in an opposing corner. Everyone else had to hope Fate was in their favor that day and they had to get in early just to save a seat with their stuff while they went to get food; which sometimes didn't even matter if the day was bad enough.  
  
Madi hadn't been this excited since, well, she couldn't even remember when. Maybe it was that stupid boy band concert over the summer she had gone to she had even otherwise forgotten the name of? Nah. She had gotten so drunk that night, she barely remembered how she got back home to the hotel. "Wait. He said yes? To you?" One of the girls in glasses whose name she couldn't remember asked her for the umpteenth time asked.

"I thought he looked smarter than that..." It was something with a G. Whatever. She'd remember the name next time she asked her for help with her homework. In exchange for it? She got access to the cool parties if and whenever she decided to actually grow a backbone and crawl out of her hole.

"If he's so smart, why is he sitting at the table with the Potato Head Twins?" Potato Head Twins. Madi blinked, head twisting around to the table at the far side of the cafeteria where the rebels and jocks sat. Once again Steve was making a fool of himself, except this time by climbing all over Adair like he was a monkey. It was almost funny. It had taken Madi herself almost an entire Freshman year to solidify and secure her own popularity, but for whatever reason she herself couldn't imagine, it had taken Adair a mere matter of days and he was suddenly the King of the Cafeteria? How?

Did people know he was the foster kid? Maybe they felt sorry for him? Hell, it had taken Lea just as long as Adair to make friends at this school even given the fact that she had somehow managed to weasel out all their summer hotspot hangouts – pretty good for someone who had been homeschooled her entire life - and that had just been after the news of the fire hit the paper and the T.V. news. Yeah, that was it. That had to be it. People were just feeling sorry for them. Sigh. Oh, but if she only knew that Lea had told Adair that he owed her a favor and that was the reason he really was taking her to the Homecoming. Lea and her wouldn't be friends and they'd both be back where they had started, with her making Lea's life miserable as she had in all sorts of ways way back in the beginning of the summer when they'd first met and she'd still persisted in gaining herself a social life, which, comparing her to the girl with the glasses was impressive given where she'd come from.  
But she knew how the story went.

New girl on the block comes into school, makes friends with all the people she needs to know in order to have a good school year in all sorts of ways, and soon enough, her pedestal would have gone back to what it had been the beginning of Freshman year, the girl – in this case, Lea - rising to her previous height as if having sucked the popularity density from her.

As it would turn out, though, Lea was just a moron, not seeking popularity or any of it. Next thing you knew, an emo Carrie would be walking through the doors of the cafeteria and be named Miss Springfield at the rate these castaways were making friends. Suddenly, something waved in front of her vision, hitting her in the eye from where she sat at the table. "Ow!" The fuck? She caught the offending pea before it lodged herself permanently in her eye. She growled low in her throat. See? She was already being made the main show of the cafeteria circus.


	6. A Story of Unknown Origin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adair has his final visit with his social worker, and finds out finally just who exactly his parents were.

Stepping out of her black Lexus, Diane sighed as she took one mournful look at the house that was on her list to check up on. The Warner’s. Nice folks. Caleb took in a lot of people when he could. She always thought he was a little strange, but then that could have been because anyone who already had even just one teenager didn’t typically scour the market, as she called the foster system, for any more. In her own eyes, one teenager was plenty for any one lifetime, but then she remembered Lea. Poor girl had been put into the foster system for a day after her mother had seemingly set the house on fire. It had been the news of the year in the neighborhood until the next mystery, which, well, hadn’t happened yet, so in a way it was still at the forefront of most people’s minds.

“You’re here early,” she hadn’t heard the car pull into the driveway, jumped before she turned around to face Caleb. He laughed, taking his keys and gesturing her to follow with a nod of his head as he walked up the driveway and to the door.

“You got the email that it was today, though? Standard after every number or so weeks.” She paled. Had she forgotten to hit “Send” again?

“I got it. I got it. They’ll be here soon. They always take the long way when they walk.” He explained, making a beeline for the coffee and fixing it immediately upon unlocking the door and letting her in first.

“How does it feel getting the Love Child? Must be a sort of milestone with you guys every time you get one of the popular ones.” She asked, sitting down on the edge of a seat and taking the offered cup of coffee as he sat down opposite of her.

“Wait, wha- Love Child?” He coughed and almost choked on the sip of coffee he had been about to take, blinked furiously and questioningly at her.

“His reason that he keeps getting sent back is always the girls.” She smiled apologetically. It probably shouldn’t be funny whenever a foster child became a sort of inside joke to the local facilities from his reputation, but contrary to popular belief, they did not get their shits and giggles out of rooting and uprooting and rerooting every poor soul that got sent to them because their birth families didn’t want them for some reason or another.

She took a look around the room, admired the stucco grey and sea-foam blue walls that stretched into the open study area which branched into the stairs going up into the second floor. He was pretty well off for an average morning talk show host, she mused as she glanced from each painting to the next of the handful of Van Goghs that hung on the walls in their polished wooden frames.

“Ah,” Caleb chuckled, but it was a forced, almost nervous, uncomfortable chuckle. She understood where it came from, though.

“Nice Van Goghs you have. We don’t get a lot of, uh, cultured, families in our branch. Somebody has hobbies outside of work,” she teased at. Her work for her was her life, to the point that sometimes she had to be told to take one of her vacation days off herself.

“My sister’s, actually. They somehow, uh,” He reached up to scratch the back of his neck. “Managed to survive the fire.” He murmured. “They were a gift from a friend looking to put them in a deserving home after she completed a favor for them.” But neither of them were there for storytime, and she merely nodded.

A big screen T.V. sat next to her on an entertainment stand with a coffee table just in front, both furnished out of similarly gleaming, smooth mahogany. Granite counters flanked a stainless steel stove and refrigerator, their colors almost matching the grey stucco of the living room and study walls. She was tempted to continue the visual journey upstairs and see if maybe the first floor was just an impression to make it seem as she thought. She had gotten those types on her list before. It wasn’t too unheard of.

But she restrained herself. She needed to be here on the inside of things to keep an eye on Adair. 

Sometimes she wondered why she was playing spy for someone as evil as Adair’s dad, the so-called Fairy King of the Unseelie. Maybe Adair was better off not knowing where he was from, especially since Him was looking for a heir to train and groom now. Why now after all these years and all the children he had that he might as well be Zeus himself, she had no idea and he wasn’t telling her. But she wasn’t going to stretch her neck out just for him to guillotine for asking too many questions because she happened to have a heart especially compared to him.

“He’s actually not half that bad.” Caleb defended Adair, quickly composing himself from almost having had choked on his coffee. He’d seen the effort Adair went to just tone it down. It had been really strong on Lea the first few days, but maybe that was how he adjusted each time. He of course knew there was a possibility he still flirted with Lea, but either way he still appreciated that he at least wasn’t getting texts from the principal about any of his so-called ill-reputed behavior. Maybe he had gotten tired of it all? Everyone did have a limit.

“Well, I’ll be. Has he really finally stopped? Your daughter must be special.” Sure, the term was a technicality in that Lea wasn’t really his daughter, but with what she knew of the girl’s family history, she might as well be. The look on her face when he got her phone call that late, late night and said he’d take her in had been like Christmas come early. It had been so full of relief. Diane arched a brow at how he said he’d gotten the Van Goghs, but they did a criminal record background check of every guardian before they sent their kids off to anyone, so he was clean as far as the legal system was concerned.

But she couldn’t blame the kids for what they got stuck in. It was hard trying to live an even decent semblance of a normal teenage life as a teenager in the foster system. Adair’s luck, however, hadn’t been nearly as good. His records went back to babyhood, which was rare to happen but did still happen. It was her turn to frown. It was almost like nobody wanted him. She chewed on her lip. But then why had Zylen let his mom go when he could have kept him this whole time and started early if he truly wanted a heir he could find?

Sure, Adair looked and dressed and even sometimes acted a bit punkish, but she’d seen a deeper layer of him as his supervisor in the occasional one-on-one interviews that showed just how more aware and smarter he was than people thought him to be. She hadn’t meant special in that Lea wasn’t attractive enough for even him to try for a go as many other families had accused him of doing; she certainly was. She meant more in that Adair was smart enough to see something in her to make him cut the crap. Even if the Warner’s didn’t seem the type to use him as a walking paycheck until his monetary value diminished and ran out or waited until any reason under the sun to get him re-uprooted. Oh, she had gotten him to talk about that much too.

They took a bit of a longer walk back home from school, even if Madi drove home so it wasn’t like they were avoiding her. Although they both were since she’d all but preached that Adair was taking her to Homecoming. What had Lea done about it? Nothing. He side-eyed her as they walked in what was for them an odd, almost awkward silence.

“If this weird thing going on here with you being all closed off and quiet from me right now has anything to do with Madi, just know it’s all on you.”

“Oh, how? You could have done anything for that favor, you know, even go all cliché and carry her books for her the rest of the year.”

Adair just eyed her.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Just know that after this favor, I’m done with her.” He ran a hand through his hair. A weird sound like steam coming from an angry kettle spilled between the gaps of Lea’s teeth, made Adair flinch and step slowly away as they continued walking, for once thankful that this time the house was in sight and- oh, fuck. Today was that day. Shit. Well, hopefully it was Diane and not some random stranger they would sometimes send to check up on how he was doing. It was his turn to growl.

“What’s got you this time now?”

“Nothing. Just something I remembered. That’s all.”

“You do realize that Madi is basically a female you, don’t you?”

“I giggle like a schoolgirl on crack?” Okay. That punch to the arm. Real. He rubbed the spot and kept any further comments on the subject to himself.

“I should have realized Madi would use the favor for that.”  
“What’re you whining about? You have a date. Besides,” he stopped. Turning to face her so that she could tell how serious he was about all this, “I thought we were trying to keep it from looking like what it is that everyone thinks we are,”

Lea blinked furiously at him a few times, mouth opening and closing, opening and closing, before her face blushed multiple times at once before finally, draining of all color. “Who? What? Huh?” Adair just watched her face change color the whole time, having to step back when he realized what she thought he had just said, paling himself in realization.

“They think. That we. We’re…”

“You don’t have to make it sound like it’s so horrible an idea…” he sighed and gave her a funny look, before shrugging and continuing to walk, leaving her behind.

What had just happened? Lea’s eyes flashed to the hazel yellow of her beast’s, frowning. Shit. He’d really taken that personally too. Wait. Wait. What had that all meant to him that people thought she was going out with her foster brother even though she’d solidified with him, in a seemingly unspoken agreement over time from the start to make it look otherwise. This was what Caleb had been talking about, though, wasn’t it? Nobody had wanted him and now they wanted him and now it was going back full circle just because she couldn’t form words for a minute and now she was watching his retreating back, feeling like such a bitch for it. She had the feeling he wouldn’t listen to her now though, sighed in realization as she hung back, taking out her phone and texting Caleb that she went to hang out with Ty after school instead of walking back home with Adair. It was then she noticed the other car hanging in their driveway. Double shit. Hopefully she hadn’t just made Adair walk in and do something stupid just because she was acting like an idiot when she was pretty sure he was the one who was supposed to be doing that job. Punching a nearby tree until she heard the splintering of wood and wincing as her knuckles speckled red with blood, she turned around and sent a quick text to Ty saying she was spending the night. She couldn’t wait to shift and hunt now.

Opening the door, Adair walked inside, closing it behind him but stopping when he saw his case manager with Caleb. Good thing on him that he had remembered what the day was and he hadn't just stormed in after that fight with Lea. Nobody here had blamed him for anything, well, yet, he should add. Caleb was still kind of rubbing him the wrong way in that he still felt he was waiting to do something even more incredibly stupid than he had to really get rid of him, but he wasn't going to worry himself over it any more than he already was until that moment ever came to pass. Lea at least seemed to take whatever he could dish. That was saying a whole lot compared to other girls he had lived with whom had been the reason to sending him packing to the next one.

"So, Adair, how's school been? I haven't been getting any calls. You trying to worry me?" His case manager, Diane, grinned at him in her usual joking and laid back manner from over her cup of coffee. Caleb nodded at him and then rose from his seat, gathering his laptop as he went to the patio out back and closing the door behind him.

Adair snorted and plopped down on the arm of the couch, one leg splayed out as the other crooked inward, shaking his hair out of his face. “It’s been normal this year- ish. If you’re asking about the fights, everyone just got too stupid for me to bother with anymore.” He grinned back at her, his ability to let things go as quickly as they happened coming to his rescue once again in that the fight he had with Lea before he walked in had already been forgotten, for now.

Diane leaned forward as she listened to him explain why he had stopped getting into trouble, nodding in approval but the instinct that made her so good at what she did telling her there was something off that he wasn’t telling her. She knew from previous visits Adair had some anxiety about certain situations now, which was why they had put him with Caleb instead of any more rambunctious households where there were some odd number of boys and girls past two which usually only got him in more trouble but had been how she had discovered the whole pattern of the paychecks and him being mostly a last resort for those who couldn’t get any other kid to balance their checkbooks and make ends meet for the other kids. Her eyes traveled over his clothes, one tell-tale sign of where the money went, blinking when she found less tatters in these jeans at the hems and down the stretches of legs than she had expected. It at least looked like Caleb was paying attention to and treating him well enough to know what really mattered than monetary value aside, though. She looked back at the handful of Van Goghs scattered here and there around the kitchen, study, and the living room they sat in, nodding. Yes, indeed.

It wasn’t like she could do too much more at this point, though. Visits were haphazardly scheduled because of the number of kids in the system in one state alone, that even if she could fit in one more before he turned 18 and made the decision for himself what to do, it would be work to rearrange a visit she had just had, and look a little strange.

“Well, I’m sure you know this is the last time you’ll be seeing me. 18! My little boy’s _all grown up_!” She teased, although having been with him the longest as his state-assigned guardian counselor the past handful of years, there was some sentiment to it. She chuckled when she saw Adair blink, running a hand through his hair as if confused. 

“Any longer and you’ll be a blonde Chewbacca. Really, do you ever cut that hair, Adair?” He must have been expecting her to mother him and ask about grades and stuff like that, maybe even girlfriends as she liked to tease him about in an almost motherly way after their third year and they realized he was probably her case until he became of age and started being so.

Everyone was being so weird and coddly today if they weren’t being jealous. Was there a full moon tonight or something? Even Diane was acting strange, and the sad thing about everything was he had forgotten this might be the last time he ever saw her with his birthday coming up in another month.

“I cut it, I swear.” He said in amusement, “But, really, next day and it’s like I never cut it at all. Are you sure I wasn’t born to a pair of Chewbacca- hey, you finally watched Star Wars. And you just tell me now? Took you long enough.” He joked back at her, having told her to watch them and realizing what she had just done.

“It only took me about two weeks and five bottles of wine.”

Adair snorted.

“Hey! Nerds can get drunk too, you know.”

“Oh, I know.”

She blinked.

“What? That was a joke.” He stopped and stared at her, rolling his eyes when it hit him that she maybe thought he was only so relaxed as he was now because he had been drinking recently.

“Okay, okay. I’ll back off since technically after this you’re no longer my case.” The lightheartedness of the fact this was their last visit – in some ways both a relief and also slightly disconcerting – suddenly hit them in the awkward aftermath of that one mom, Diane almost having been a sort of mother figure to him in the past five years where others had only come in and out where needed.

Suddenly, a thought him, and he tilted his head at her. “Okay, so either way if we still had this much time left no matter who would have fostered me, why this set-up?”

“Oh, you were always more paranoid than the-“ she flinched as he stared at her hard. Wow. He really was good at putting two and two together even when others saw nothing, or, even, when they did, assumed they were just being ‘paranoid’.

Adair just kept staring at her.

She sighed, her face suddenly pale as she shuddered as if remembering a bad memory. Turning her head as if to make sure Caleb was still where he was at the patio, headphones in as if listening to something. Probably something to do with work, she assumed. “Okay, but, look. Whatever happens when you turn 18, just get away from here. I haven’t told this to Caleb or Lea, so that’s up to you how involved you want them.”

“What? You’re not even making any sense.”

“Alright, look. I found out who your dad is.”

“My. Dad?” Oh, the look on his face. She could tell he was trying hard not to get excited even for as much as he was keeping it in to himself. Diane had once managed to get him to tell her about his thoughts on having the kind of birth certificate listed as both parents being unnamed. He had told her, with the straightest face she had ever seen on anyone his age, that whatever happened, happened. He’d been left on a doorstep of a local orphanage that at the time had been filled to capacity, with only an envelope bearing his name and said birth certificate to his self.

While he never showed it, Diane knew Adair got tired of being the black sheep from home to home that was also used as the scapegoat. As for earning the nickname of Love Child, what she had said to Caleb earlier about it being due to his reputation with the ladies had been a lie. Though more to protect Caleb from exactly what she was finally revealing to Adair now. However, every other reason Adair got sent back was because he wasn’t getting along with the too-diverse number of children in every household. But once Adair had admitted that he felt like a paycheck on legs, and even then much to his disgruntlement as she had rather jabbed for the answer on how he felt about certain things out of him for as much as he would have rathered gone on pretending to be a tough guy, she’d started looking for more homes like this, Caleb’s, for him. It just so happened to get lucky he could free himself soon while having had some chunk of a semblance of a normal adolescent childhood before then.

“There’s no easy way to say any of this, honestly. It’s only been an assumption that it was your mom who dropped you off at that local orphanage with that envelope for records, but. Well.” She ran a hand over her face. Why was this so hard? Oh, right. Because it wasn’t normal. “I know you put on this whole front of being the tough guy who’s fine not being rooted to any family tree roots, but, I also know you’re going to want to find out who you are eventually. It happens to all of us no matter what we say about it as you have.” She was stalling, wasn’t she? Okay, Diane. Cut the crap and go. She told herself. He was staring at her even harder now already if that was possible. “Your dad’s the King of a race of dark fairies known as the Unseelie.” She watched as Adair merely arched one wavering brow, then blinked at her, once, twice.

Then laughed.

He barked out a rip of a laughter he’d never heard from him, made even more unique she’d barely ever heard him let loose so much as a chuckle at any point in their sessions with each other. But the deadpan look she must have had on her face as she stared as he laughed stopped him in his tracks.

“You’re not pulling my leg.”

She smiled defeatedly. “No. Sadly. I’m not.”

He ran a hand through his hair, spreading his knees shoulder-width apart to hang his arms between them, putting his face in his hands and letting out a loud, soft breath. “Not sure why I laughed when we already know things like vampires and humans that can turn into wolves exist…”

Diane merely shook her head. Hurrying her pace now that she’d at least finally broken the ice: “There’s a reason I’ve made certain I’ve had you the longest even while you bounced from home to home having stated you’d rather that than put up with,” she chuckled, “orphanage crap as you put it.”

He stucks his tongue at her. “Well, hey, now that I know that fairies are real too, maybe I would have gotten kidnapped by Peter Pan and turned into a Lost Boy.”

Now it was her turn to laugh like an idiot. But then also stop.

“Oh, trust me. I’ll spare you the details in this bit but being kidnapped by Peter Pan would have been a cakewalk compared to how I met your dad. Let’s just put it that way.”

There was that blank look he was so good at making when he went into himself and made it hard for her to tell what he was thinking or so much as feeling. She frowned. “I can’t do much where I am, but I needed to tell you something.” Adair tilted his head at her.

“Let me guess. Eighteen is the big number and he’s just been biding his time?” He smiled as if in a dark amusement at the situation. With how many movies were made from fairy tales, he at least knew some things, which, apparently were more real than anyone could assume.

They were both stalling at getting to the point of revealing to Adair where he’d come from. They both knew it. Yet they were still both doing it.  
She was chewing on her lip and looking everywhere but at him.

Then she did.

“Essentially, yes. He said there was still a chance his genes could win out in you, but were only likely to manifest at eighteen. But he said even if you didn’t, you still had better chance at candidacy for his throne than most his other children. Whatever that may mean. You’re not human. But while,” she shuddered, “Zylen, your dad, was having his fun with me after he’d kidnapped me, he told me some things.” She fidgeted.

Adair stared at her, swallowing as if trying not to throw up at what he knew that must have meant. And here he had thought he’d only felt like he’d never belonged anywhere simply because he was a foster kid. Nope.

“You were saved by another fairy, but this one was from the Seelie Court. Except, uh. Sometimes it would seem he and Zylen could set aside their differences for some fun. At least until one night. He’s not as old as Zylen but he’s old enough he was able to hide while escaping Faeryland with you after you were born, having disguised himself as a nurse who had taken you from Zylen.” She paused. Looking up from where she was suddenly oddly interested in examining her hands as she spoke.

He paled.

“You’re not human, but you’re also still part human. Your mom had been a human Zylen had kidnapped after some time in the human world doing who knows what. Sometimes they have to come out here for politics they can’t escape. Other times just to have some more modern fun than whatever they do there.”

She went to take a sip of her now room temperature coffee, but then stopped and put it back down when the brown liquid wavered, not wanting to spill on the suede she sat on as she continued slowly telling him the story of his birth.

“Anyway. To sidebar for a bit, as from what I learned about Fairy Politics 101 in however long I was kidnapped only to come back on Zylen’s order to continue keeping a close eye on y-“

“You’re still what?"

“I’ve been stalling. But he says even if I refused to tell him any more, he still has some spies here watching you.” She watched him. “Has there been anyone weird at school? Maybe anyone a bit too interested in wanting to hang out with you or anything?”

He slid down where he sat until he was curled into himself, legs stretching over the other arm of the couch he sat in. “There’s one redhead trying to date Lea, and he has a twin who keeps trying to be my lab partner.” Adair snorted. “I just act around them like it’s normal for them to want to be around us when we’re hanging out, but most everyone else let us be the weird couple.”

Diane stared at him. He froze and side-eyed her, mouth stammering. “We don’t do anything obvious, and I’ve been laying off flirting with her at school.” He grinned. “I got cliché and went for her annoying best friend who’s been flirting back at me since the first day I met her. But that one’s just a crazy redhead trying to get into my pants like any other girl. It just always happens to be the redheads.’

Diane sighed. Of course he had eyes and ears even closer to Adair, and now apparently Lea. But what was he wanting to do with Lea by having one get close to her?

Adair seemed to read her mind. “You think he’s gonna use Lea to get to me when he finally sees whatever he’s looking for in me?”

She nodded. Slowly. Then they both cast a quick look to where Caleb was still naively working away on things at the patio outside.

“We’ll get to that next. But you never finished.” He prodded her. She shivered at the look in his eyes. For as deadpan as he appeared, his eyes were clearly showing at this point he’d rather have simply found out he was an orphan like the orphan he had gone all these years assuming he was.

“Right, well. So this Seelie Fairy somehow knew you were due and happened to be around just to disguise himself as a fairy nurse. When Zylen handed you off to him, or rather her as he said he had assumed the nurse to be then, this fairy, Mitch, escaped with you.” A strange look came across her face not typical with her usual demeanor.

“Wherever this Mitch is now, he’s apparently still doing a very good job hiding himself. Zylen still hasn’t found him, but he’s still looking for him. Something about a punishment he deserves.” Diane rubbed the back of her neck. “And that’s how you ended up at that orphanage.”

She stared at Adair, who hadn’t responded, but was instead looking through the windows just at Caleb. Diane didn’t blame him. It was a lot to take in and while the blame was certainly not on him, it was an interesting way to feel like he was paying back Caleb for his hospitality through.

“I didn’t want to end it like this either, but with you, well, turning eighteen a month from now. He seems suddenly bent on making you his heir to his throne after all these years, but he wouldn’t share with me the details why now. Whatever it is, there’s something you apparently have a chance at more than his other descendants.”

Slowly, he pulled himself back up and adjusted himself so he was sitting upright on the couch now. While he never got money for things like birthdays or holidays, he had done jobs of the typical variety as bagger at the local grocery store or cashier where he could get away with it, saving every cent between the two years until he had at least a good thousand dollars on him. Stashed away in socks he hid in his duffel bag and always kept right under his bed no matter whose home he landed in. Even this one.

Diane froze.

He had already decided on what to do.

She played her hand under jaw, as if playing with a beard that wasn’t there. “If you do what I think you might, don’t tell me. If Caleb comes to me, I’ll simply tell him as little as I can get away with filling him in on.”

“Thank you.” He said, almost dully, making to rise and get Caleb for her, but she stopped him before she could, rose and moved around the coffee table between them to pull him up into a tight hug. Adair tensed, but he knew it had taken her as much to tell him as it had for him to listen to his story just now, squeezing her back just as tightly as she pulled back to grab her purse from next to the couch she sat in.

“I wish there was more I could do, but if there is,”

Adair nodded, hair hiding his face as a lump rose in his throat. “Yeah. I will.”

She cast a quick look out the window herself, waved jovially as if the strange hug they’d had was only because this was their last visit before he turned 18 and left the system, and walked out and climbing into her car before pulling out and driving away.

Caleb had finished what he’d needed to do for the day, and as he’d closed the lid to his Macbook, he turned in his seat at his patio to a sight he hadn’t thought capable of becoming a reality.

Adair.

Was hugging someone.

But he turned away before he could get caught, only looking back when Diane appeared to be walking out just in time to catch her waving at him. She seemed in a rush, but he waved back at her as he got up and carried his laptop back in.


	7. Glance Into the Crystal Bowl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lea has a girl's night with Taylor, and finds out a little bit of background history on where Adair comes from.

Bags of chips and popcorn lay open around Lea and Taylor as they sat on the bed talking about the strange afternoon, how Lea had gotten so close to almost revealing herself to Adair, he had pissed her off by being so stupid as he had that whole day just that much.

“Admit it. You only like him as much as you do now because not only has he seemingly lost all interest in you as you say he has since those first couple days,” at which Taylor snorted, having heard recalls of those too. “But also because, somehow, for as much as you continue trying to find out about him, somehow, you keep knowing less about him. He’s cute, but,” Taylor chuffed, shutting herself up immediately and prolonging what should have otherwise just been another sip of coke for her.

Lea stared unblinkingly at her, arching a brow almost questioningly, but yet it was almost as if she was staring right through her. Then she shook her head and cleared her throat, grabbing another handful of popcorn to toss back into her mouth.

“You skipped something about him. What is it?” Taylor blinked at her, frowning. Maybe it was because she was a witch, or maybe it was just because she had learned long ago to let her instincts tell her what to do and what not to do and to what to pay attention.

Whatever the fact was, there was something about Adair. Taylor couldn’t put her finger on she didn’t like. 

Sure, he was nice enough, but there was something there just under the surface she had seen when trying to figure his aura earlier that summer when they’d met before the night at the café. Something about which she’d only read and heard stories. He was human, yes, there was some of that mixed in there, but there was also a tinge of fae in him for at which she couldn’t have helped but stare into his aura.

“When we got into that fight earlier, I saw his veins turn to ice and crystals spread across his skin like snow when he curled his fists… but I thought I just saw things…” Lea trailed off, her turn to frown.  
It was Taylor’s turn to stare at her.

“What? You know what that is?” Lea asked her, leaning in, hands on her feet as she pressed the soles of her feet against each other, eyes wider.

Taylor hopped off the bed, opening the door to her closet and taking out a bowl of carved quartz. Running into the bathroom, almost slipping on the hardwood of her bedroom in her haste, she came back with the bowl filled nearly two-thirds of the way with water, trying not to spill it now. Plopping down against the bed and sitting in the same position as Lea, Taylor tilted her head up at her. “If I’m right about this spell and where he might be from… you’re not going to like it, and it’s not going to end up good for any of us.”

“Well, it’s better than not knowing shit when it happens, right?” Lea chewed her lip.

“Right?”

“I guess if you want to go that way. You got anything on you might have touched recently?” Taylor asked almost nostalgically.

Lea blinked, tilting her head in thought.

“He might have brushed by my shirt earlier.”

“Even the smallest thing works with this one. Just cut a piece off will be fine.”

Climbing off the bed, Lea slinked over to Taylor’s desk in the corner of the room next to the bathroom, finally finding a pair of scissors under the rest of all the art supplies that seemed to be in an ever constant battle with the desk for dominance.

Coming back to Taylor and the bed, Lea perched herself on the edge, folding her arms as she handed Taylor the lacy strip of black fabric, eyes dark as if drowning in thoughts now.  
“But I’m not going to show you shit unless you promise me to act normal after this spell with that look there in your eyes. Even knowing this might turn out dangerous, and we’ll be lucky if nothing happens at all. Ancestry spells for people like Adair don’t usually turn out all that awesome.” Taylor explained, taking the strip and holding it just above the water with a look at her before she dropped it in after a slow, stunned nod of acknowledgment.

Cupping her hands firmly around the curved edge of the bowl, Lea sunk herself down against the side of the bed, so she was on the floor now too. The water shimmered even as it was sat on the floor before a myriad colors swirled in it to form an image that flashed before slowly unfolding into a scene in some point in time.  
Sitting on a throne with the arms and head of the back carved into gargoyles, a man sat staring almost infuriated at a pair of redheads. One sat on the triad of stairs leading up to the throne perch, naked with only an intricate collar around his neck that matched that of the other redhead’s. And the other one was slowly taking a step back from the heated stare of the King, who looked almost uncannily like an older version of Adair enough to even possibly be his dad with the uncanny resemblance in features.

“You had one chance at freedom, and you even fucked that up?! All you had to do was make friends with my son, enough to possibly even get adopted by the same foster parent. WAS THAT SO HARD?” The words seemed to echo around the room, and yet it was only in both Lea and Madi’s heads they heard the scene. But Lea had to convince herself of this by taking a quick look at the door to see if anyone would barge in wondering what on earth they were watching before she realized this was how they heard anything.

“They made me answer a bunch of random forms before they would let me wait, though! I tried to get out of it, but they said the only way I could even find a new place was through the paperwork.”

“Fucking humans. Always busying their lives with terms and signatures that never seem to matter. Now, who knows who long until I get my heir back. I could only do so much through his counselor through that stupid system, and they'll throw him away like trash in a month once he turns of age. Ugh. You’re useless.”

“Wait!” The cowering redhead in front of the King shouted.

“What? Make it good, or I’m killing your brother here and now if it’s something stupid again.”

“I don’t know how I did it. But I managed to make friends with the girl whose dad took him in this time, and there’s this thing called a Homecoming I asked her to, and I think I can maybe still make friends with him.”

The King stared at him like he’d just grown an extra head.

“Dear boy, you might have actually just saved your brother’s life. Keep going to this school and making friends with her and him and go to this stupid thing, but after this dance whatever it is, you’re done, so I wouldn’t get too taken with the thought of freedom. Had it not been for the fact that you met my son way back when in that first home, you would still be here fronting my stairs with your brother, who’s only with you to report back to me so I know you’re not lying.” The King stated almost matter-of-factly, stroking the head of the gargoyle with one long, well-manicured finger on the end of one arm, the other hand in his lap as if adjusting himself.

Just then, however, he froze in his stroking. Eyes flashed gold as they scanned the place before somehow meeting the eyes of both Lea and Taylor where they were frozen almost catatonically in Taylor’s bedroom, their souls so tied with the spell that connected the dots that were Adair’s place in everything as they were. Cackling, the King yelled out, making both redheads before him flinch.  
“Don’t change your minds, dears! It will only be worse if you try and stop me from getting what’s mine if you do. I can promise you that.”


End file.
